


Ink

by Strange_johnlock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, John is a good parent, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Tattoo, getting tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 12:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strange_johnlock/pseuds/Strange_johnlock
Summary: "John. Thinking of him hurts the most, knowing John is currently in London starting a new life, a life without Sherlock."Every tattoo Sherlock gets has to do with John.This fic was part of the advent calender 2018





	Ink

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't do it without Amelia and Kim. Thank you for beta reading for me. I know it's a lot of work, considering English is not my native language. I'm so grateful :D

The first one is an anatomically correct heart. He gets it in a small tattoo shop somewhere in a back alley in a country he doesn’t even remember the name of. It’s one of those evenings. He misses home and the pain is almost unbearable, his body feeling like he really hit the ground next to Bart’s hospital and every bone inside of him is broken.

    Machine, that’s what John called him. He wishes he felt like a machine, it would be easier.

   John. Thinking of him hurts the most, knowing John is currently in London starting a new life, a life without Sherlock. He himself doesn’t have a life, he just exists for the sake of the plan. Until then, he is just a big brain getting carried around by his means of transport, a weakened, pale body.

   It now also carries his tattoo right where his heart is beating in his chest, bold lines in white ink, which are barely visible as they don’t differ much from his skin tone. It’s not for others to see. It’s his, hidden from the people just as much as he hides his real heart.

   At night, he lays awake and his fingers follow the lines and curves that raise a millimetre from his ribs. It helps to convince him he’s still human. He has a heart, just like everyone else and he has proof of that under his fingers, more proof then just the beating in his chest. His heart is there and whoever will look close enough can see it.

 

   He returns to London and John, of course, is hurt and angry. He is also engaged. Sherlock has expected this, of course, but somewhere deep inside he hoped they could just return to normal.

   Baker Street is so empty, even with the cases and the buzz of the city outside. Still, the pain is bearable knowing he’s back in the heart of London where he belongs.

   He finds the drawing between his notes, where Mycroft has put them into boxes. He drew it years ago, just a sketch of his violin leaning against a stack of books. Maybe, he thinks, it’s that little something people call destiny. He needs this.

   Whenever he is not almost getting blown up by a bomb in a train or saving John from being burnt alive (He was never this scared before. He can’t lose John when he has just come back into his life) he’s working on the drawing until it feels perfect.

   He considers a few tattoo artists, until he one day walks into Jenna’s shop. She’s in her late twenties, a small, round woman with bright eyes and very talented hands. She looks at his sketch and adds a few details he hadn’t even considered, and that’s when he knows he can trust her with this.

   It takes eight hours of pain and weirdly good conversation and even laughter until it’s done. There he is in only his boxers standing in front of the large mirror, Jeanna standing back, studying his reaction and all he can do is gape. His thigh is covered in black ink and he has only the pain to prove this is not coal on paper. It bleeds, but not too bad.

The tattoo burns while he tries to teach John how to dance, but the pain of John stepping on his toes is worse. Having John close is good. He smells a little bit like Mary, but mostly like himself and Sherlock missed him. The heart next to his chest is beating in rhythm with the one inside.

    He returns to Jenna and his veins are filled with heroin. He’s good at hiding it, but the marks on his arms tell another story. He’s just glad the bruises from where John hit him are now healed.

    He made the sketch with shaking fingers, almost addicted to the needle that pushes ink into his upper dermis. It’s better than the one he used on himself to prove Culverton Smith is a serial killer. She doesn’t ask questions, already knows him this well after only one day spent together. He read, somewhere, that tattooing is more intimate than sex, not that he would know.

   She thinks it’s just a skull, and she has probably done hundreds of those. She doesn’t know it’s the skull of the most perfect human being, inspired of years of watching that human every day. He even took measurements while John was asleep in his armchair, Rosie sleeping on his chest.

 

   Jenna cleans the skin of his inner upper arm.

   The Tattoo is still not healed when they fight Eurus, and when he tells Molly he loves her he thinks of John’s skull on his skin and feels as if he is somehow betraying John, even though he knows the good doctor doesn’t love him back.

    Rosie splashes her baby food through the whole kitchen and her giggle is a beautiful symphony. Sherlock rolls back his sleeve and continues to try and feed her. She, different from her father, understands food just slows down her transport and prefers flinging it.

   John is getting ready for work, humming a song as he showers and shaves. It’s a scene of domestic bliss and Sherlock takes in every detail to never forget. There is a John and Rosie wing in his mind palace and it is rapidly running out of space. He will have to add a few rooms soon, a winter garden filled with light.

Light. Conductor of light.

   John smells like Sherlock’s shower gel and wet hair and John. Sherlock wants to tattoo this scent onto his own skin to always be able to have access to it.

 

   Rosie is coaxed into eating two spoonfuls of mashed peas and Sherlock is weirdly proud to have achieved even that. He wipes away food from her eyebrow and places a kiss there. Her hand finds his cheek, warm and chubby and Sherlock smiles. This endlessly fascinating little girl has conquered his heart within the short time she has lived in 221B and he didn’t even try to stop her.

   “What is that?” John is standing behind him, looking over his shoulder and it takes Sherlock an embarrassingly long time to realize what his question is directed at.

   His newest tattoo is two weeks old, four roses on his wrist. The negative space between them shows the silhouette of a little girl. He took his favourite picture of little Watson to Jenna and she, again, did an impeccable job.

   Now, with his sleeves rolled up, it is visible to John and Sherlock blushes. His sentiment is too obvious now and he feels vulnerable.

   “Oh.” The sound is incredibly soft coming from John’s throat. “You got this for her.”

   All Sherlock can do is nod, but when he looks up at his best friend, the man he loves, John has tears in his eyes. Having learned from the last time, Sherlock gets up to hug him. They hold each other for a while and the embrace ends in giggles, as they realize Sherlock has smeared baby food on John.

   Sherlock stares up at the ceiling of his bedroom, fingers, as they often do, tracing the lines of his very first tattoo. Now long healed, he can barely feel it anymore, but he knows exactly where the lines cross and tangle. The movement has through the years become a way to calm himself, but now he has to avoid the bullet wound right at the centre of it.

   The mattress dips next to him as John rolls to his side, hand covering Sherlock’s where it lies on his sternum.

   They are naked underneath the duvet, John’s skin warm where they touch, and Sherlock presses himself even closer. John leans over him, taking away his hand and his lips press to the altered skin. He can’t see the tattoo, they turned the light off before going to bed, but he has seen it before, has traced every inch of it with his fingers and tongue.

   Every soft touch has made Sherlock fall in love more, his heart beating fast and hard, like it could burst with joy at every moment.

   John doesn’t know the skull is modelled after his. Sherlock doesn’t need to tell him for John to know how much he is adored.  

 

  John’s tattoos are small. Sherlock holds his hand, while Jenna works, but John is strong and brave, he doesn’t even wince.

 

  The motifs he picked are very small and the lettering is done in a very delicate but clean way to fit both John’s kindness and military background.

 

SH

RW

 

  John has never been a man of many words, but always finds the right ones. The important ones.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Ink](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424479) by [Podfixx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podfixx/pseuds/Podfixx)




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